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Media Platforms Design TeamFile photo shows staff at Heathe N. Craig Joint Theatre Hospital waiting to greet wounded veterans during ‘Operation Proper Exit’ at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Credit: Getty ImagesAn anonymous U.S defense official said Tuesday that five American troops were killed in an apparent friendly-fire incident in the southern Zabul province in Afghanistan. All five died on Monday, but no further details have been disclosed, including the soldiers’ identities....

This year offered more demonstrable evidence that all animals—big, small, with wings, or with thumbs—will face the drastic effects of climate change. But not all animals will face these changes in the same ways. Some species, like sea turtles, might experience a warming climate much more radically.A new study from the British University of Exeter and the Portuguese Marine and Environmental Sciences Center looks at a specific sea turtle population in the Bijagós Archipelago of Guinea‐Bissau, located in west Africa....

Switching from frequentist to Bayesian calculation may have led to a finer Heisenberg limit.The frequentist-Bayesian divide permeates fields from statistics to A.I.Noiseless quantum systems are the main target for the new form of Heisenberg limit.Researchers in Poland and Australia have collaborated on a new paper redefining the Heisenberg limit. This little-understood number tries to quantify how quantum systems and phenomena are physically measured, because the numbers are influenced by the presence of the means of measurement themselves....

Face=painting is usually pretty low stakes, but the militaries of the world approach it as an important challenge. How best to make a face look like anything but? As Dr. Christopher Larsen of the One Shepherd Leadership Institute demonstrates, thousands of years of evolution has trained humanity to recognize the structure of our faces, so the best bet is to try to exaggerate those features to the point where they’re no longer recognizable....

An article in an official army periodical is being ridiculed for claiming that the Russian military has psychic abilities and has used them in wartime. The article makes big claims but outside Russian critics claim it’s all nonsense and that the article should never have appeared in a Russian military publication.The article, “Super-Soldier for the Future Wars,” was published in the February issue of the Russian Army’s Army Digest. The author, reservist Colonel Nikolai Poroskov, makes reference to “metacontact technology," which is apparently a new word for what the rest of the world calls psychic technology....

Clayton Anderson spent his first 15 years at NASA designing spacecraft. He spent his last 15 flying them. But somewhere in between there, Anderson spent time getting rejection after rejection for the astronaut program –15 in all, each inching closer and closer to the finish line before he was finally selected in 1998. In his book, The Ordinary Spaceman, he talks about his journey from small-town Nebraska to floating 250 miles above the Earth....

Microsoft’s voice assistant, the barely year-old Cortana, is a new kid on the block compared to Siri and Google Now. But its newest trick is good news for you, no matter what phone or operating system you use: Cortana is coming to Android and iOS. Cortana for non-Windows phones will come as a downloadable app showing up on Android in June and iOS later this year. It’ll have all the standard voice-assistant features, like the ability to tell you about the weather and to set reminders from voice commands....

DJI, one of the most popular consumer drone manufacturers, introduced two new drones this week. The Phantom 4 Pro and the Inspire 2 improve on what DJI’s built before in almost every way with updated software, improved hardware, better handling, and refined image quality.With the release of the enthusiast-friendly Mavic Pro a month ago (although it’s hit some shipping delays), DJI has refocused on making pricey drone hardware built for the pros....

A guided missile frigate that sank last year after a collision with an oil tanker is floating on its own while the Royal Norwegian Navy assesses the damage. The Helge Ingstad spent more than three months submerged in the frigid Norwegian Sea before being raised again in March. Experts believe the warship, exposed to oxygen-rich salt water, is so badly damaged it will never sail again. The Helge Ingstad, one of the most capable guided missile frigates in NATO, collided with the civilian tanker TS Sola in the early morning hours of November 8, 2018....

Transmission Fluid Blues Q: I have a somewhat stupid question, but one that none of my friends could answer: After changing the left drive axle on my 1989 five-speed Ford Probe, I pulled the old axle off, and a lot of transmission oil dropped onto the floor. My buddy ran to the store and brought back two liters of Dextron III type A Automatic Transmission Fluid because, at the time, I thought the manual-transmission just needed the proper gearbox oil—not ATF....

Engine and Motor: 2.0-liter I4, 296 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque; permanent magnet electric motor, 141 hp and 203 lb-ft of torque / Net Power: 398 hp and 472 lb-ft / Electric range: 31 miles /Battery: 13.1 kWh lithium ion / Transmission: 8-speed automatic with AWD and active rear differential / Base curb weight: 5,430 pounds / Max wading depth: 33.5 inches/ Top Speed: 137 mph (85 mph in electric mode) / Tow rating: 5,511 pounds / Base price: $79,000As the trip odometer passed 90 miles, the fuel economy readout held steady at 75 mpg....

Media Platforms Design TeamTo gear up for the outdoor season, you’ve just bought a gas-engine string trimmer, or maybe you’re taking your old one out of storage. If you want to spend less time trimming and edging your property and more time enjoying your lawn, you’ll need some accessories to work efficiently and keep your machine running smoothly.Safety EssentialsAll string trimmers have a debris deflector, but the deflector can’t stop everything....

A handful of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters built during the early days of the program could become unflyable by 2026, after just 2,100 flight hours—another embarrassing piece of news for the troubled program. The culprit is almost certainly the F-35’s design and production plan, which involved starting to build the planes before the final design specifications were set. A fix to keep the aircraft in the air is in the works....

The Milky Way galaxy, which stretches some 100,000 light-years across, is orbited by dozens of much smaller galaxies, some spanning only a few thousand light-years. Where these satellite galaxies came from, how they formed, and what they can teach us about the universe are among the most pressing questions in astronomy. But we do know these faint little galaxies have interesting pasts. In a study published today in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University conclude that the faintest satellite galaxies around the Milky Way are among the oldest galaxies in the entire universe....

Media Platforms Design TeamBREAKTHROUGHWHO Boston Scientific Valencia, Calif. FIELD Medical devicesACHIEVEMENT Innovation in spinal-cord stimulators that relieve chronic pain.On a warm August afternoon, Molly McCarthy is hustling along 76th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She has just 40 minutes to squeeze in a training session before she’s due back at the office where she works as an advertising executive. She crosses Second Avenue, ducks into the New York Sports Club, and dashes to the locker room, where she changes, wraps her wrists with pink tape, and grabs a pair of pink boxing gloves from her locker....

On June 23, 1963, Walt Disney opened his famous Tiki Room on the grounds of Disneyland. Featuring animatronic animals, a Polynesian atmosphere, and nonalcoholic tiki drinks, the Tiki Room quickly became a hit with visitors to the California theme park. What visitors did not know was that the Tiki Room’s beating heart was derived from nuclear weapons technology, missiles that could devastate the Soviet Union in a nuclear war.As Los Angeles’ KCET explains, Disney’s Tiki Room was an enormously complex enterprise....

America’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet, the backbone of the Navy’s fighter force, is getting new fuel tanks, as you can see in the Boeing artist’s depiction above. The tanks are designed to allow the plane to fly and fight farther than ever before. It’s a move that is in large part driven by a desire to stop Chinese long-range missiles that could target aircraft carriers, destroying them before they can threaten American flat-tops....

The U.S. Navy’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers, built during the 1980s, are nearing retirement age and there is nothing to replace them with. A backbone of the Navy’s air defenses, the tall guided-missile cruisers’ retirement would leave a hole in the Navy’s ability to defend aircraft carriers and other high profile ships just as the service is shifting back to a focus on fleet versus fleet warfare.USS Ticonderoga, the first ship in the class, was commissioned in 1983....

View full post on Youtube"I’m sorry, Dave. You’ve had enough coffee this morning. I don’t want you to wig out.“Okay, so Vessyl doesn’t actually talk to you. But the sleek new smart cup is the nutritional data equivalent. Developed by Fuseproject, Vessyl uses a molecular sensor to automatically identify whatever liquid you pour into the cup, be it coffee, fruit juice, soda, or other. According to Fast Company, it can even tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, conducting a molecular version of the Pepsi Challenge down at the molecular level....

Why walk up to a bomb when you can ride? A company called Torq Defense Systems has developed an electric all-terrain vehicle that is designed specifically for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel. In other words it’s a go-kart for the bomb squad.The Explosive Ordinance Disposal Light Tactical Electric Vehicle (LTEV), isn’t meant for service overseas, where IEDs abound. Rather, it was built with customers in law enforcement in mind. “We designed this purpose-built LTEV with input from EOD and law enforcement industry” said Rick D’Andrea, Director of Sales and Marketing in a press release....